Spatial communication systems across languages reflect universal action constraints.

The extent to which languages share properties reflecting the non-linguistic constraints of the speakers who speak them is key to the debate regarding the relationship between language and cognition. A critical case is spatial communication, where it has been argued that semantic universals should exist, if anywhere. Here, using an experimental paradigm able to separate variation within a language from variation between languages, we tested the use of spatial demonstratives-the most fundamental and frequent spatial terms across languages. In n = 874 speakers across 29 languages, we show that speakers of all tested languages use spatial demonstratives as a function of being able to reach or act on an object being referred to. In some languages, the position of the addressee is also relevant in selecting between demonstrative forms. Commonalities and differences across languages in spatial communication can be understood in terms of universal constraints on action shaping spatial language and cognition.

Mind over body: Interfering with the inner voice is detrimental to endurance performance.

In two preregistered experiments, we investigated whether covert language is involved in sustained physical efforts, specifically if people are less able to push themselves physically when distracted from using inner speech. In both experiments, participants performed 12 cycling trials (Experiment 1: N = 49; Experiment 2: N = 50), each lasting 1 min where participants were required to cycle as fast as possible while simultaneously engaging in either a visuospatial task, a verbal task or no interference. Experiment 1: Participants performed worse in the verbal interference condition compared with the control condition (d = 0.29) and verbal interference performance was numerically but not significantly worse than visuospatial interference (d = 0.22). Experiment 2: A more demanding interference task yielded significant slower cycling with verbal interference compared to both control (d = 1) and visuospatial interference (d = 0.43). These results indicate that inner speech plays a causal role in control of sustained physical efforts.

Measuring Cognitive Abilities in the Wild: Validating a Population-Scale Game-Based Cognitive Assessment.

Rapid individual cognitive phenotyping holds the potential to revolutionize domains as wide-ranging as personalized learning, employment practices, and precision psychiatry. Going beyond limitations imposed by traditional lab-based experiments, new efforts have been underway toward greater ecological validity and participant diversity to capture the full range of individual differences in cognitive abilities and behaviors across the general population. Building on this, we developed Skill Lab, a novel game-based tool that simultaneously assesses a broad suite of cognitive abilities while providing an engaging narrative. Skill Lab consists of six mini-games as well as 14 established cognitive ability tasks. Using a popular citizen science platform (N = 10,725), we conducted a comprehensive validation in the wild of a game-based cognitive assessment suite. Based on the game and validation task data, we constructed reliable models to simultaneously predict eight cognitive abilities based on the users' in-game behavior. Follow-up validation tests revealed that the models can discriminate nuances contained within each separate cognitive ability as well as capture a shared main factor of generalized cognitive ability. Our game-based measures are five times faster to complete than the equivalent task-based measures and replicate previous findings on the decline of certain cognitive abilities with age in our large cross-sectional population sample (N = 6369). Taken together, our results demonstrate the feasibility of rapid in-the-wild systematic assessment of cognitive abilities as a promising first step toward population-scale benchmarking and individualized mental health diagnostics.

"Stay focused!": The role of inner speech in maintaining attention during a boring task.

Is inner speech involved in sustaining attention, and is this reflected in response times for stimulus detection? In Experiment 1, we measured response times to an infrequently occurring stimulus (a black dot appearing at 1-3 min intervals) and subsequently asked participants to report on the character of their inner experience at the time the stimulus appeared. Our main preregistered hypothesis was that there would be an interaction between inner speech and task relevance of thought with reaction times being the fastest on prompts preceded by task-relevant inner speech. This would indicate that participants could use their inner voice to maintain performance on the task. With generalized linear mixed-effects models fitted to a gamma distribution, we found significant effects of task relevance but no interaction with inner speech. However, using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis method, we found that trials preceded by task-relevant inner speech additionally displayed lower standard deviation and lower mode (independently of the main effect of task relevance), suggestive of increased processing efficiency. Due to deviations from the preregistered sampling and analysis procedures, we replicated our findings in Experiment 2. Our results add support to the hypothesis that inner speech serves a functional role in top-down attentional control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Sex, anxiety and the interplay with physiological variables of stress: a clinical study of patients about to undergo bronchoscopy.

Women often report more anxiety than men, but there are divergent results regarding the putative correlation between physiological variables, such as cortisol, blood pressure and heart rate and the experienced emotional states. The aim of the present study was to evaluate sex differences in anxiety, and the relation to serum cortisol, blood pressure and heart rate. We used data from two pooled studies with participants from the same population (N = 405) facing a real-life stressor, bronchoscopy, as part of examination for lung cancer. At admission, blood pressure and heart rate were recorded, and a blood sample was taken for analysis of serum cortisol. Participants then completed Spielberger's State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Patients had elevated anxiety measured with STAI state compared to relevant age and sex stratified norm scores. Women had significantly higher STAI state score than men (M = 44.9, SD = 13.2 vs M = 36.2, SD = 10.7; t(403) = 7.25, p < 0.001). Mean serum cortisol, systolic blood pressure and heart rate showed no significant sex difference. There was a weak but significant correlation between state anxiety and heart rate and cortisol but none between blood pressure and anxiety. This study adds an important confirmation of sex differences in anxiety in a real-life setting, where women report significantly more anxiety than men do. However, the physiological markers only show a weak link with experienced anxiety, and exhibit no sex differences.

Cross-Cultural Sex/Gender Differences in Produced Word Content Before the Age of 3 Years.

Does sex/gender matter for language acquisition? Small advantages in vocabulary size for females are well documented. In this study, however, we found that children's early vocabulary composition was a significantly better predictor of sex/gender than their vocabulary size. We conducted classification analysis on word-production data from children (12-36 months old, n = 39,553) acquiring 26 different languages. Children's sex/gender was classified at above-chance levels in 22 of 26 languages. Classification accuracy was significantly higher than for models based on vocabulary size and increased as a function of sample size. Boys produced more words for vehicles and outdoor scenes, whereas girls produced more words for clothing and body parts. Classification accuracy also increased as a function of age and peaked at 30 months, reaching accuracy levels observed in studies of adult word use. These differences in vocabulary are indicative of differences in the lifeworld of children and may themselves cause further differences in development.

Verbal interference paradigms: A systematic review investigating the role of language in cognition.

This paper presents a systematic review of the empirical literature that uses dual-task interference methods for investigating the on-line involvement of language in various cognitive tasks. In these studies, participants perform some primary task X putatively recruiting linguistic resources while also engaging in a secondary, concurrent task. If performance on the primary task decreases under interference, there is evidence for language involvement in the primary task. We assessed studies (N = 101) reporting at least one experiment with verbal interference and at least one control task (either primary or secondary). We excluded papers with an explicitly clinical, neurological, or developmental focus. The primary tasks identified include categorization, memory, mental arithmetic, motor control, reasoning (verbal and visuospatial), task switching, theory of mind, visual change, and visuospatial integration and wayfinding. Overall, the present review found that covert language is likely to play a facilitative role in memory and categorization when items to be remembered or categorized have readily available labels, when inner speech can act as a form of behavioral self-cuing (inhibitory control, task set reminders, verbal strategy), and when inner speech is plausibly useful as "workspace," for example, for mental arithmetic. There is less evidence for the role of covert language in cross-modal integration, reasoning relying on a high degree of visual detail or items low on nameability, and theory of mind. We discuss potential pitfalls and suggestions for streamlining and improving the methodology.

Sex differences in longevity are relative, not independent.

I ask three questions related to the claims made within the staying alive theory (SAT): Is survival more fitness-enhancing for females than for males? Does the historical record on sex differences in mortality support the SAT? Is it possible to talk about "independent selective pressures on both male and female traits" when all we have are sex/gender comparisons?

Klinefelter syndrome or testicular dysgenesis: Genetics, endocrinology, and neuropsychology.

Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY) is a frequent chromosomal disorder among males, often presenting with hypergonadotropic hypogonadism, small firm testicles, metabolic disorders, neurocognitive challenges, and increased height. Neurologic disorders such as epilepsy, seizures, and tremor as well as psychiatric disorders are also seen more frequently. The neurocognitive deficits seen are present in many areas of cognition, typically affecting general cognitive abilities, language, and executive functioning. Also, social dysfunction is frequent. Dyslexia is present in more than half of all males. Brain imaging studies generally show a typical pattern, with many nuclei and brain areas being smaller than among controls. However, it has not been possible to link the brain alterations found in imaging studies with the neurocognitive profile. The genetics underlying the phenotypic traits found among males with Klinefelter syndrome still remains to be elucidated; however, recent studies have described pervasive changes in the methylome and transcriptome and new and interesting candidate genes have been pinpointed, but their involvement in the phenotype of Klinefelter syndrome has not been proven.

Valence, form, and content of self-talk predict sport type and level of performance.

In this paper, we aimed to test whether we could predict sport type (badminton or running) and marathon proficiency from the valence, form, and content of the athletes' self-reported inner speech. Additionally, we wanted to assess the difference between self-talk during high intensity and low intensity exercise. The present study corroborated existing research - we were able to predict both sport type in Study 1 and intensity level as well as marathon proficiency in Study 2 from questionnaire data using machine learning models. In Study 1, we found that badminton players engage more in worry and anxiety-control while runners are more prone to task disengagement. Interestingly, it seemed in Study 2 that the more participants engaged in condensed, positive, and repetitive self-talk when not pushing themselves, the slower their fastest marathons and half marathons were. We discuss potential explanations for these findings and make suggestions for future research.

Gender differences in language are small but matter for disorders.

Gender differences in language can be signs of cognitive differences, but can also by themselves be the cause for such differences. Females have a slight linguistic advantage over males, but effect sizes are small, and gender explains very little of the variance seen in the normal population (1%-2%). However, males outnumber females in the lowest 10th percentile in language tests (2:1), causing males to more often be diagnosed with developmental disorders, which rely on tests of language development. Thus, gender differences in language are negligible, if you focus on the whole population, but if you focus on language deficits, gender differences are outspoken. Differences in voice and word use can be observed among the genders, making it possible to predict gender from these measures with a high degree of certainty. A subtle finding is that women use more first person pronouns. This is also observed in depression, which is more prevalent in females, opening up a potential link. Sex chromosome trisomies are often accompanied by language deficits, but the causes for this are not known. No gender differences are observed in the linguistic symptoms of neurodegenerative disorders. Poststroke aphasia is more prevalent among women than among men, but this seems to be an age-effect. A link between the brain and gender differences in language is thus missing.

Psychological functioning, brain morphology, and functional neuroimaging in Klinefelter syndrome.

Klinefelter syndrome (KS; 47,XXY) impacts neurodevelopment and is associated with an increased risk of cognitive, psychological and social impairments, although significant heterogeneity in the neurodevelopmental profile is seen. KS is characterized by a specific cognitive profile with predominantly verbal deficits, preserved function in non-verbal and visuo-spatial domains, executive dysfunction and social impairments, and by an increased vulnerability toward psychiatric disorders. The neurobiological underpinnings of the observed neuropsychological profile have not been established. A distinct pattern of both global and regional brain volumetric differences has been demonstrated in addition to preliminary findings of functional brain alterations related to auditory, motor, language and social processing. When present, the combination of cognitive, psychological and social challenges has the potential to negatively affect quality of life. This review intends to provide information and insight to the neuropsychological outcome and brain correlates of KS. Possible clinical intervention and future directions of research will be discussed.

Demonstrative Reference and Semantic Space: A Large-Scale Demonstrative Choice Task Study.

Spatial demonstratives (words like this and that) have been thought to primarily be used for carving up space into a peripersonal and extrapersonal domain. However, when given a noun out of context and asked to couple it with a demonstrative, speakers tend to choose this for words denoting manipulable objects (small, harmless, and inanimate), while non-manipulable objects (large, harmful, and animate) are more likely to be coupled with that. Here, we extend these findings using the Demonstrative Choice Task (DCT) procedure and map demonstrative use along a wide spectrum of semantic features. We conducted a large-scale (N = 2197) DCT experiment eliciting demonstratives for 506 words, rated across 65 + 11 perceptually and cognitively relevant semantic dimensions. We replicated the finding that demonstrative choice is influenced by object manipulability. Demonstrative choice was furthermore found to be related to a set of additional semantic factors, including valence, arousal, loudness, motion, time and more generally, the self. Importantly, demonstrative choices were highly structured across participants, as shown by a strong correlation detected in a split-sample comparison of by-word demonstrative choices. We argue that the DCT may be used to map a generalized semantic space anchored in the self of the speaker, the self being an extension of the body beyond physical space into a multidimensional semantic space.

Language beyond the language system: Dorsal visuospatial pathways support processing of demonstratives and spatial language during naturalistic fast fMRI.

Spatial demonstratives are powerful linguistic tools used to establish joint attention. Identifying the meaning of semantically underspecified expressions like "this one" hinges on the integration of linguistic and visual cues, attentional orienting and pragmatic inference. This synergy between language and extralinguistic cognition is pivotal to language comprehension in general, but especially prominent in demonstratives. In this study, we aimed to elucidate which neural architectures enable this intertwining between language and extralinguistic cognition using a naturalistic fMRI paradigm. In our experiment, 28 participants listened to a specially crafted dialogical narrative with a controlled number of spatial demonstratives. A fast multiband-EPI acquisition sequence (TR = 388 m s) combined with finite impulse response (FIR) modelling of the hemodynamic response was used to capture signal changes at word-level resolution. We found that spatial demonstratives bilaterally engage a network of parietal areas, including the supramarginal gyrus, the angular gyrus, and precuneus, implicated in information integration and visuospatial processing. Moreover, demonstratives recruit frontal regions, including the right FEF, implicated in attentional orienting and reference frames shifts. Finally, using multivariate similarity analyses, we provide evidence for a general involvement of the dorsal ("where") stream in the processing of spatial expressions, as opposed to ventral pathways encoding object semantics. Overall, our results suggest that language processing relies on a distributed architecture, recruiting neural resources for perception, attention, and extra-linguistic aspects of cognition in a dynamic and context-dependent fashion.

This is for you: Social modulations of proximal vs. distal space in collaborative interaction.

Human spatial representations are shaped by affordances for action offered by the environment. A prototypical example is the organization of space into peripersonal (within reach) and extrapersonal (outside reach) regions, mirrored by proximal (this/here) and distal (that/there) linguistic expressions. The peri-/extrapersonal distinction has been widely investigated in individual contexts, but little is known about how spatial representations are modulated by interaction with other people. Is near/far coding of space dynamically adapted to the position of a partner when space, objects, and action goals are shared? Over two preregistered experiments based on a novel interactive paradigm, we show that, in individual and social contexts involving no direct collaboration, linguistic coding of locations as proximal or distal depends on their distance from the speaker's hand. In contrast, in the context of collaborative interactions involving turn-taking and role reversal, proximal space is shifted towards the partner, and linguistic coding of near space ('this' / 'here') is remapped onto the partner's action space.

Grammar, Gender and Demonstratives in Lateralized Imagery for Sentences.

We investigated biases in the organization of imagery by asking participants to make stick-figure drawings of sentences containing a man, a woman and a transitive action (e.g. she kisses that guy). Previous findings show that prominent features of meaning and sentence structure are placed to the left in drawings, according to reading direction (e.g. Stroustrup and Wallentin in Lang Cogn 10(2):193-207, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2017.19 ). Five hundred thirty participants listened to sentences in Danish and made eight drawings each. We replicated three findings: (1) that the first mentioned element is placed to the left more often, (2) that the agent in the sentence is placed to the left, and (3) that the grammatical subject is placed to the left of the object. We further tested hypotheses related to deixis and gender stereotypes. By adding demonstratives (e.g. Danish equivalents of this and that), that have been found to indicate attentional prominence, we tested the hypothesis that this is also translated into a left-ward bias in the produced drawings. We were unable to find support for this hypothesis. Analyses of gender biases tested the presence of a gender identification and a gender stereotype effect. According to the identification hypothesis, participants should attribute prominence to their own gender and draw it to the left, and according to the stereotype effect participants should be more prone to draw the male character to the left, regardless of own gender. We were not able to find significant support for either of the two gender effects. The combination of replications and null-findings suggest that the left-ward bias in the drawing experiment might be narrowly tied to left-to-right distribution in written language and less to overall prominence. No effect of handedness was observed.

This shoe, that tiger: Semantic properties reflecting manual affordances of the referent modulate demonstrative use.

Demonstrative reference is central to human communication. But what influences our choice of demonstrative forms such as "this" and "that" in discourse? Previous literature has mapped the use of such "proximal" and "distal" demonstratives onto spatial properties of referents, such as their distance from the speaker. We investigated whether object semantics, and specifically functional properties of referents, also influence speakers' choices of either demonstrative form. Over two experiments, we presented English, Danish and Italian speakers with words denoting animate and inanimate objects, differing in size and harmfulness, and asked them to match them with a proximal or a distal demonstrative. Objects that offer more affordances for manipulation (smaller and harmless) elicited significantly more proximal demonstratives. These effects were stronger for inanimate referents, in line with the predictions of sensory-functional views on object semantics. These results suggest that demonstrative use may be partly grounded on manual affordances, and hints at the possibility of using demonstratives as a proxy to investigate the organization of semantic knowledge.

Sex differences in post-stroke aphasia rates are caused by age. A meta-analysis and database query.

BACKGROUND: Studies have suggested that aphasia rates are different in men and women following stroke. One hypothesis says that men have more lateralized language function than women. Given unilateral stroke, this would lead to a prediction of men having higher aphasia rates than women. Another line of observations suggest that women are more severely affected by stroke, which could lead to a higher aphasia rate among women. An additional potential confounding variable could be age, given that women are typically older at the time of stroke. METHODS & PROCEDURES: This study consists of two parts. First, a meta-analysis of the available reports of aphasia rates in the two sexes was conducted. A comprehensive literature search yielded 25 studies with sufficient information about both aphasia and gender. These studies included a total of 48,362 stroke patients for which aphasia rates were calculated. Second, data were extracted from an American health database (with 1,967,038 stroke patients), in order to include age and stroke severity into a regression analysis of sex differences in aphasia rates. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Both analyses revealed significantly larger aphasia rates in women than in men (1.1-1.14 ratio). This speaks against the idea that men should be more lateralized in their language function. When age and stroke severity were included as covariates, sex failed to explain any aphasia rate sex difference above and beyond that which is explained by age differences at time of stroke.